The Sedona International Film Festival is right around the corner. The 30th annual event kicks off Saturday, Feb. 24, and runs through Sunday, March 3.
SIFF began as fundraiser to build and then maintain the Sedona Cultural Park on the far west side of West Sedona. The festival, a separate entity, labored on after park went out of business, is now one of Sedona’s premier events.
An estimated 10,000 moviegoers will attend the festival, which has grown over the last 30 years into one of the most well-known and regarded independent film festivals in the country.
While many moviegoers are residents of Sedona and the Verde Valley, many more are from Flagstaff, Prescott and the Phoenix area while some arrive from across the country and the globe, coming for the festival itself or working their otherwise normal vacation to our area to take in a movie or two or in the hopes of having a celebrity sighting.
While the festival is still a week away, the identically named nonprofit is hosting a series of short film screenings, features the Oscar nominees, from Friday, Feb. 16 through Thursday, Feb. 22.
The Oscar-nominated live-action shorts include: “The After,” “Red, White and Blue,” the Danish “Knight of Fortune,” “Invincible” and “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar.”
The documentary shorts include: “The ABCs of Book Banning,” the Taiwanese “Island In Between,” “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó,” “The Last Repair Shop” and “The Barber of Little Rock.”
The animated shorts include: “Pachyderme,” the Iranian “Our Uniform,” the French and Israeli “Letter to a Pig,” “Ninety-Five Senses” and “War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko.”
Long films can be hit or miss. For every “Oppenheimer” or “Killers of the Flower Moon” that packs in loads of top-notch, Oscar-worthy acting and cinematography, there a are a dozen films like “Pearl Harbor” or “The Eternals” or “Babylon” that hope audiences see the longer runtimes to mean that they pack in more substance and character development but fail to do so and just eat up more time when movie goers could be on their way home, complaining about the film.
The best thing about short films is that the good ones leave you wondering and thinking about their implications long after the credits roll and the bad short films are over quickly. I’m subscribed to numerous short film channels online that provide a host of ideas and concepts in a short span. The “Dust” channel showcases some really witty and smart sci-fi films from excellent directors or filmmakers who are far too under-funded for anything but a short film, but can turn 10 minutes of runtime into sci-fi brilliance. KIS, aka “Keep it Short” and Omeleto offer a cornucopia of short cinema, some great, some just OK, but all easily digestible. Short films are a great way to gear up for the film festival and see what filmmakers have to offer, and SIFF is screening not just good films, but those nominated for Oscars.
At SIFF in 2015, my friend Claire Pearson and I made friends with a half-dozen young British filmmakers who were screening their short film “Stutterer.” We offered them suggestions about what to sights to see while they were in town and took an impromptu walk along Oak Creek.
We watched their great short film with them the next day at the Sedona Performing Arts Center, a 12-minute short about a British man [Matthew Needham] with a terrible stutter getting ready for a blind date a few days away and doing his best to overcome his debilitating speech impediment. Right after, they took off to Los Angeles to attend the 88th annual Academy Awards. That night, they won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. Claire and I saw our new friends, there on stage, delivering acceptance speeches.
Incidentally, Needham had only some minor parts before his role in “Stutterer,” but afterward, very likely to his affiliation with an Oscar-winning production, had a role as Lucien Bonaparte in Ridley Scott’s 2023 “Napoleon” and as the major character of Larys Strong in HBO’s “The House of the Dragon,” the ongoing prequel to “A Game of Thrones.”
If you’re eager for the SIFF to start up and what to get yourself ready, we will have several in this edition and next week previewing events you can attend before the festival begins in earnest. If you want to know about SIFF events or the festival itself, or want to buy tickets in preparation, visit sedonafilmfestival. com.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
